2004-10-03 - 6:28 p.m.
I'm busily pretending that the conversation about flying home and working at Wal-Mart didn't happen

So Wednesday a week I took my last pill. Last weekend was horrendous. This week things seemed to get better, or maybe it would have if I hadn't been fighting with Boyfriend.

Thursday I was on my way home from work when I remembered, whoopsadaisy, my shrink appointment. This didn't seem like that big a deal since Thursday had been a really good day--I had stayed at work until 8:30 the night before--and I figured this whole crazy patch was over.

Then Friday sucked--on my way home from the bus, I sat down on a bench in a little square with grass and trees and dogs, and cried there, because I knew I was going to anyway, and I figured I might as well get some fresh air and sunlight while I was at it. And yesterday sucked (but less so since I actually got out of the house, although I probably wasn't all that pleasant to be around), and then last night around 1 am, a little after Shane dropped me off, I got all teary again. And I didn't get to sleep until 5 am.

Then Ken called at 10, and between him and my parents, I didn't stop crying until 1:30 at least.

I actually said to my mother, "Why couldn't I have been hit by a truck? There's no shame in being hit by a truck!"

Nothing to explain away, either.

Instead, I do have to explain, and it's never, ever worth it. I can't do anything lately without crying. What makes you cry, Mom asked. Flossing! I replied. Bleeding gums! Paper cuts!

I couldn't tell her about the thing with my boss, when he mentioned having to do something at the SJC [Mass's Supreme Court], and I uttered a customary Wow, nothing unusual for me, and he looked at me as if I had just said that Miranda ought to be overturned. Jenny, he said. It's no big deal. He said it twice.

Granted, this particular boss has argued at the Supreme Court, so maybe it isn't a big deal to him at all. But he looked at me with SO much pity, like there was something seriously wrong with me. And I wanted so desperately to say something, along the lines of "Look, as someone unlikely to ever have to do anything at any Supreme Court, it is a huge deal to me, and your patronizing tones are a tad misplaced and more than a tad hurtful." But I couldn't. I just uttered some choking noises and got the hell out of his office.

The next evening [that is, last night], when I said Wow when the guy next to me said he was at the Kennedy School of Government, as in Harvard, as in Holy Shit, Dude, and he said pretty much the same thing, I told a shorter, untearful version of that story, concluding, "So, as someone unlikely to ever set foot in either place, it IS a Big Deal, and Bite Me."

This leads to all sorts of questions, like Why is it so easy for me to get excited about what other people are doing, when what I'm doing isn't all that different?

I managed to get Mom, Dad, and Ken all going at fever pitch today. Do Your Homework. Don't Fuck Up at Job. Nothing Will Get Better Until You Do Your Homework. You Won't Graduate Unless You Do It. Quit Complaining and Do It. Which of course I hear as, We Won't Love You Until/Unless You Do It. Which isn't fair to them, probably, but I'm getting sick of this, their not seeming to get it.

I have been SO belligerent lately. At the same time, people seem to be saying incredibly insensitive things to me at increasingly high rates.

I was trying to explain to Mom what was so hard about work, mentioning the banal officespeak from my cube cohorts, and how one of them had been shssshing me and hurting my feelings without realizing it, and somehow this turned into, "Well, did you ever think, 'Hey, maybe it's offensive when I belch at work'?"

Bewildered, I replied, "Uh, yeah... because I make a regular habit of belching at work?"

Then she said, "Well, are you as LOUD there as you are here?"

At which point I elected to cordially disengage. "This discussion has ceased to be constructive," I said. Love you. Bye.

Family members, and Ken, have bugged me for YEARS about me supposedly being loud. I have caught hell forever because of my laugh. Because I am animated. Because, goddammit, I have emotions and I express them regularly.
Because, Ken says, I don't know how to whisper.

This doesn't make sense to me, particularly because, in addition to "Mouth of the South," my other family nickname has been "Radar Ears."

Equally confusing is my accused tendency to mumble, which also doesn't make sense. Pick one, people. Either I'm too loud or I'm too quiet. I'm obviously too dramatic and too whimsical and too weird for any of you, so I'm just going to curl up in my afghan and cry until tomorrow morning and it's time to go to work, because somehow it doesn't hurt as much when I fuck up there.

Do the Work. Do the Work. How do I explain to them that last weekend I did one load of laundry and it was a major accomplishment? That today, my not taking a nap, so as to be awake tomorrow morning, is an equally major accomplishment? That getting started on something makes me freak out because it always makes me realize how behind I am? They say there's no point in beating myself up about how spectacularly I've screwed up law school, but you know what? That message doesn't comport with all the other signals that Not Only Are We Worried Sick about You, We're Mad as Hell Too, and We're Not Leaving You Alone Until We Get Our Pound of Flesh for Our Forty Ducats.

I'm the first to admit I've been lazy. I make sloths look hard-working. But last weekend, and this weekend, it's been fucking impossible to comprehend doing much of anything, much less hit the books. I'm amazed I even went out last night.

I kept saying when I was home that no one really gets how fucked up I am. I don't know what that would take. I can email them pictures of my room, and of what I look like when I leave for work, and of what I look like right now, I suppose. Show them my receipts, from Trader Joe's and ATM trips to pay for taxi rides to work in order to make it to work on time. Bring them up here so they can smell the dirty-clothes smell and try walking around my room. But I don't know what that would do other than make them cry. Because I live here and that's what it makes me do.

They keep saying how frustrated they are with me, and I want to shake them all and ask them how the hell do they think it feels to be like this. Because right now I don't know if I am actually organically crazy or if this is some aftereffect of stopping the med. I do know that if I call the shrink before my Thursday appointment, he will kindly and matter-of-factly list my three options: going back on the other med, trying another med, or waiting to see if this recedes. And each is about equally unsatisfying.

woogie - woo